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00:00:06blizzards flooding heat waves storms and sub-zero temperatures the british weather has them all
00:00:16to the extreme we were tasked with rescuing people when asked who we were just told to
00:00:23save as many as you can my first reaction was god they've done it they've dropped the bomb
00:00:29over the past 75 years we faced some of the most shocking weather events imaginable in over 30 years
00:00:37with west britain's fire service i'd never really seen that before seven homes were lost to the sea
00:00:42they just fell from the cliff edge a nation going toe-to-toe with mother nature
00:00:50to see people fighting for air was a harrowing experience you can imagine
00:00:57and people with no other option than to tackle the most turbulent times head-on
00:01:01if something goes wrong for us then there's nobody coming to rescue us that's for sure
00:01:05and fighting to survive britain's most deadly weather
00:01:15in february 2018 a deadly cold snap unleashed a snowstorm across the uk plunging temperatures
00:01:23below minus 14 degrees celsius blowing snow into 10 foot high drifts we had prolonged cold weather where
00:01:31air came from the easterly direction from the near continent brought sub-zero temperatures for this
00:01:36prolonged period of time and it was down to this high pressure so we normally have low pressure that
00:01:42brings stormy conditions wet and windy but high pressure it stops the weather from changing it's
00:01:49basically like a force field it stops anything moving out of its way and we sat under this cold easterly
00:01:54winds over 10 days with record breaking temperatures and also record snowfall
00:02:04in the northwest of england farmers were among the hardest hit facing the worst winter conditions
00:02:10many had ever known i'm paul renison i'm a hill farmer from renwick penrith cumbria and
00:02:16i live on a farm with my wife nick and two daughters bella and poppy so our farm is at
00:02:26800 meters so the
00:02:27farmhouse is relatively high it's probably one of the highest farmhouses in the eden valley nestled on
00:02:34the fell side nick and paul's farm covered 360 acres the same size as 200 football pitches and was home
00:02:42to
00:02:42over 700 sheep and 80 cattle typical february day we were feeding sheep so we're rolling bales of
00:02:50halogen putting wing feeders over the top of them bedding the sheep down the weather we normally get
00:02:57in our area is there's generally a wind we have very few completely still days the wind is always there
00:03:04but it's generally from the west but on the 26th of february a sudden shift in the polar jet stream
00:03:14caused the wind direction to flip allowing super cold air from russia to flow in it came from this
00:03:20easterly direction this is really unusual across the uk and it was down to this thing called sudden
00:03:25stratospheric warming owing to this unusual feature britain's media named it the beast from the east
00:03:32the stratosphere is normally very cold but when it rapidly warms the winds there which are normally
00:03:38westerly start to ease and then they shift direction they go easterly and that happens all the way through
00:03:45the atmosphere right the way down to the surface after the stratosphere warms rapidly we know that
00:03:50down on the surface we will turn a lot colder
00:03:56so we'd gone to bed that evening overnight the wind had picked up and we woke up to the sound
00:04:02of the wind
00:04:04all you could hear was just this hellish wind outside sounded like siberia it just was howling
00:04:14everything was dark the windows were completely covered in the snow and it was then the realization
00:04:21that we had to kind of kick into action at this moment the renaissance had 300 sheep on an exposed
00:04:28part of the hillside and 40 cows in their sheds and with no power or running water and a blizzard
00:04:35raging
00:04:35outside the farm was no place for a family to be you couldn't really see very far maybe i don't
00:04:41know
00:04:4110 foot in front of you and it just looked complete white out the noise it was just incredibly inhospitable
00:04:51the beast from the east bit hard thousands of schools were closed across the uk
00:04:56hundreds of motorists were stranded overnight on the m62 and m80 motorways and the national grid
00:05:03issued a gas deficit warning prompting fears of a shortage anything else coming in
00:05:13and in cumbria help was being mobilized to villages cut off by the snow so bay section rescue is a
00:05:21primarily a coastal rescue team we operate right across morecambe bay we also get involved in things
00:05:27like the massive snowstorms that the beast from the east created farming communities very quickly ran out
00:05:35of supplies we picked up around about a ton and a half or two tons of food and basic essentials
00:05:40for us
00:05:41it was um we've got to get in there quickly uh do the job before it gets any worse and
00:05:47then and come out
00:05:53so that morning we had a lot of cattle in sheds and the sheds have have yorkshire boarding on so
00:06:00strips of wood which are used for ventilation for to get daylight in the boards are sort of an inch
00:06:08or
00:06:08two apart from each other and uh normally that's enough to keep all the snow and the rain out and
00:06:13stuff but this fine snow seemed to just blow in and get everywhere and all the cattle were covered in
00:06:20snow they were really really cold they they couldn't get any shelter because it was just blowing in
00:06:27yeah as a farmer i've never seen anything like that before in this particular part of the pennines
00:06:34there's this thing called the helm wind it's the only named wind across the whole of the uk
00:06:39and when you get a persistent northeasterly wind hitting the pennine hill going up and down the other
00:06:45side it causes these clouds almost looking like helmets hence the name helm you might think that the
00:06:50strongest winds happen on the side of the mountain that's facing the winds coming towards you the windward
00:06:55side but actually the strongest winds happen on the other side the leeward side and the winds are so
00:07:00strong that it cannot walk us off their feet and it was the helm wind that was causing serious problems
00:07:08for nick and paul as they went head to head with its 60 mile per hour gusts it was a
00:07:15blowing wind that was
00:07:16so so strong that it took you it took your breath away so you were kind of breathing and then
00:07:21it would just
00:07:22whip it away i remember we linked arms and we couldn't communicate with each other because you
00:07:29couldn't hear anything and we walked across three or four fields to get to the sheep
00:07:35we realized that we were just completely by ourselves and you kind of go into survival mode
00:07:41so we ran the sheep off the hill through the gate and they ran straight towards this wall
00:07:49and then the snow kept on coming wind kept on blowing all our efforts were concentrated on trying
00:07:55to get these sheep out of the snow drip you have to get really close to each other and shout
00:07:59at each
00:08:00other every minute there was they're there on top of each other dying you try and get out there and
00:08:06spend as much time as
00:08:07you can digging these things out you can just see a snow covered body and it was they were sometimes
00:08:12dead or sometimes nearly dead and it was realizing that um you just there's some of them you can't help
00:08:19it was a little bit like a war scene where you've got soldiers just dropped everywhere
00:08:27in that moment you feel completely helpless you've got their welfare so you've got that kind of sentimental
00:08:33side of you but you've also got the business side where you've got hundreds and hundreds and thousands
00:08:38of pounds just falling away some of them had just got too weak and they were just too cold and
00:08:45you've
00:08:45got to just walk away and that was really tough the beast from the east had brought deep snow to
00:08:53large
00:08:53parts of britain parts of the west of scotland saw snowfall up to 50 centimeters among the heaviest in
00:09:00recent memory and the met office issued the first ever red warning of snow in england forecasting a
00:09:07possible risk to life a few inches of snow across cumbria can can bring the county to a standstill
00:09:13but when you get a few feet in a few hours then that's a different animal
00:09:2060 or 70 mile an hour gusting winds
00:09:26white outs where you had zero visibility
00:09:32it was a frightening thing and you're climbing over the fell tops to reach remote villages and
00:09:37hamlets you literally are driving on 20 feet of snow and then all of a sudden it'll disappear
00:09:43back out of the way the moment that you stood out of that vehicle you you knew you're in a
00:09:47different
00:09:48environment and really a dangerous environment you know we're going to turn this around here
00:09:52and uh abandon this route we're going to go around the other way and see if we can get it
00:09:56from there
00:09:57at that stage you begin to think actually can we see this through um and now we're going to be
00:10:03able
00:10:03to do what we've set out to do and of course if something goes wrong for us then there's nobody
00:10:08coming to rescue us that's for sure
00:10:13these were some of the worst winter conditions that people had ever experienced in that part of
00:10:18cumbria power lines came down so many communities had no power at all some because of the huge amount
00:10:24of snow were completely cut off because of the combination of this biting wind coming from the
00:10:29east adding in this helm wind it brought these catastrophic amounts of snowfall and these exceptionally
00:10:35strong winds which caused widespread devastation transport networks collapsed and power lines were
00:10:41downed bringing the country to a standstill panic buying emptied supermarket shelves whilst the nhs faced
00:10:49surging demand and staff shortages the biggest hurdles was getting up those farm lanes because the
00:10:56the depth of snow was above the walls hello you're right everything's all right is it yeah my team
00:11:02actually climbed out of the vehicle and and carried most of the stuff through the lanes and paths
00:11:11when you've done your last drop off then there's a sense of relief
00:11:15after 10 long cold days the beast from the east finally departed this unwelcome visitor had been
00:11:22unprecedented with snowfall and sub-zero temperatures on a scale not seen since 1991.
00:11:29it had cost the uk economy an estimated 1 billion pounds a day and claimed the lives of 10 people
00:11:36we
00:11:37lost over 100 sheep in that snow drift i still think about it but i've tried to put out of
00:11:42my mind
00:11:45nowadays our weather reports have got a lot more detailed i look at it at least once a day sometimes
00:11:50five or six and then i'll make my management decisions around the weather forecast when the storm had
00:11:58passed you've kind of got this hangover you're exhausted i think the beast from the east made me
00:12:04realize how powerful nature is how powerful the weather can be how damaging it can be and that it needs
00:12:11to be
00:12:40respected
00:12:41the weather crashing into the country just before winter began in late october a deadly storm hit
00:12:48southern england in which four people lost their lives more than 600 000 homes were left without power
00:12:54and hundreds of trains and flights were cancelled we had 12 storms pummeling the uk torrential amounts
00:13:01of rainfall with huge storm surges and it was the wettest winter that england and wales have recorded since
00:13:07records began in 1766. and as the year drew to an end the bad weather only intensified
00:13:16it all began on december the 5th with the coastlines of essex suffolk and norfolk bearing the brunt of this
00:13:23deadly weather in 2013 i was living in a town called hymnsby in norfolk with my wife jackie and we
00:13:31lived
00:13:32there for seven years until the sea surge david whiteley is a journalist who was working as a local
00:13:40news reporter in norfolk during this particularly stormy winter this sand dune is all that's between
00:13:46the north sea and these houses behind me we'd been commissioned to make a short documentary about
00:13:52uh sea defenses that people wanted to build in hemsby because they were terribly concerned about the
00:13:57rate of erosion uh on the on the norfolk coast we came to speak to a couple who literally were
00:14:04living
00:14:05on the edge living their houses on on built on one of the sand dunes we were happy there
00:14:10just behind our place all we had was just a footpath a sand dune and then it was the beach
00:14:16and many
00:14:16times we sat on top of the sand dune just looking out to the sea
00:14:22but stephen and jackie's idyllic beach home was under constant threat from the weather and the north sea
00:14:28the cliffs at hemsby are eroding because the rock here is really very soft and whenever you have a
00:14:34storm it's just battering away at that soft rock undercutting the cliffs and then they
00:14:40will just collapse we were getting worried about it we even tried to sell our house we couldn't set
00:14:47it and uh even dropped the price right down we still couldn't sell it couldn't get rid
00:14:53the destructive power of the sea was something people living along the norfolk coast were all too
00:14:58used to with the area's relatively flat landscape and closeness to the shoreline making it especially
00:15:05vulnerable to severe weather like storms strong winds and snow my name is daniel heard and i'm
00:15:12the coxswain for the hemsby lifeboat i've been volunteering for the lifeboat for about 23 years
00:15:19now and we get called out to all sorts of jobs broken down vessels injuries cardiac arrest there's a lot
00:15:28we
00:15:28do within the village uh like with snow falls and people getting stuck we make sure that we're there
00:15:34to help them out so they don't come in harm's way on the 5th of december 2013 we had a
00:15:44low pressure
00:15:45system causing a storm surge to move down the east coast the weather reports saying it was going to be
00:15:51a big storm we were expecting it right on that day we didn't think it was going to be as
00:15:57bad as what it was
00:16:00we just thought it wasn't going to really impact what we were doing too much that all changed
00:16:09the north sea the one thing that had attracted stephen and jackie to hemsby
00:16:14was about to pummel the east coast of england with the biggest tidal surge in more than 60 years
00:16:21the environment agency issued 30 severe flood warnings that is the highest level that they
00:16:26had ever issued it was all the way from essex suffolk norfolk up to lincolnshire in excess of
00:16:32two meters above the normal sea level around parts of norfolk having devastating impacts
00:16:41we're filming with jackie and steve and i remember filming a piece to camera around their their house
00:16:46and the wind had really got up it felt really strong and it steadily got worse from there
00:16:54storm surges happen when we have a low pressure weather system and that low pressure sucks up the
00:16:59surface of the sea and we also have high winds strong winds associated with that low pressure system
00:17:05and lashing the coast as well making that water even higher and then on top of that we have a
00:17:11spring
00:17:12tide so that's when we have the earth and the moon and the sun all lined up in a line
00:17:16and that
00:17:17gravitational pull will pull even more water than a normal high tide onto the land and as soon as you've
00:17:24got all three and the direction of wind the northeasterly that's where you're going to be hammered and
00:17:31unfortunately that's what happened that night the type of beach you've got here is actually quite small
00:17:37a bigger beach can absorb lots of the energy from the waves from the storms but here because it's
00:17:43a narrow beach the waves can get straight at the cliffs it was like having a 14 ton machine just
00:17:51hit
00:17:51it within like 10 minutes and demolishing it there was an old concrete lifeboat station that had been
00:17:57on the beach of hemsby for many many years sand underneath it was being eroded by the storm surge
00:18:03and parts of it were crumbling away until you know the whole walls were collapsing and all of a sudden
00:18:08it just started to disappear the lifeboat hut is literally tipping into the sea
00:18:16to see what was happening and unfolding in front of my eyes it was uh yeah it was heartbreaking really
00:18:23to see the time and the effort that had been put into that lifeboat station and uh just to see
00:18:28it
00:18:28destroyed in the matter of hours well we went down to the pub to raise money for sea defenses
00:18:36governor of the pub come around and said steve you better get back the sea's coming in so we're taking
00:18:41out the lifeboat station it's getting very very close to yours when i heard the lifeboat station had gone
00:18:46i knew it must have been pretty strong because the lifeboat station was actually on bricks it weren't just
00:18:50on sand steve was very anxious to check the house to see what was going on so we walked up
00:18:57and still i thought we're going to get there it's going to be fine we'll say cheerio we'll see you
00:19:02tomorrow we've just come along um jackie's road and the house next door which has actually been
00:19:07condemned anyway half half of the house is gone we literally were walking up the the kind of slope
00:19:13up the driveway to their to their house and we heard someone at the front say the back's gone
00:19:21our house was hanging over the side and the walk was rushing underneath our house like a raging river not
00:19:26going in and out like the tide does like a raging river jackie's saying what are we going to do
00:19:31what
00:19:31we're going to do oh yeah she was panicking jackie said we could be homeless tomorrow they were the
00:19:41truest words she ever said because we were homeless the following day jackie was just inconsolable steve was
00:19:49in shock what was very amazing was how everyone in hemsby rallied around i never see so many people
00:19:57down here turning out at like 12 o'clock at night loading vehicles up that was just amazing and to
00:20:04see people just get to hemsby to help out you could just see how everyone was pulling together people who
00:20:09don't even know formed human chain and got what they could out furniture wise and took it back to the
00:20:14puffer safekeeping and at this point it wasn't just the building in danger of going over the cliff edge
00:20:20it was people too seeing the properties going in and seeing some of the crew going in to making sure
00:20:27these properties were empty i remember we having ropes around ourself people at one end outside the
00:20:34door holding on to that rope i think that was a little bit bit scary because i'm thinking not knowing
00:20:41whether that property is going to end up going over with you in it i'll never forget it to this
00:20:47day
00:20:47you could literally hear wood splintering and we looked in and the floor was lifting up and bearing
00:20:56in mind there are several people in the house trying to get things out and everyone's saying out out
00:21:01everyone get out everyone get out the shout went out everybody out the place is going to go and then
00:21:09we heard this gut-wrenching crack and i saw the house cracking off and i heard it crack
00:21:19and the bottom half went down it was frightening just how fast it happened
00:21:27if it had happened later in the night i won't be sitting there talking to you now
00:21:34the most severe storm surge in 60 years caused widespread disruption across norfolk suffolk and
00:21:42essex leaving behind an estimated one billion pounds worth of damage we came back to hemsby at first
00:21:48light to see what happens overnight that's when the realization kicked in that it had been a very
00:21:56dangerous situation the night before and to see houses stream down the sides of sand dunes and the
00:22:05remnants of the lifeboat station it was something out of a film
00:22:11there were seven houses lost that night where so much sand had gone so much of the dunes had gone
00:22:18from
00:22:18underneath them the speed was just unbelievable i've had that sea search came in and took so much out and
00:22:23done so much damage in such little time jack you're looking at me this is just yeah it's unreal that's
00:22:31the living room that is yeah it was the living room i've never seen anything like it and then the
00:22:38stark reality hits and you look over the side and you can see the north sea
00:22:46and i remember coming down here and it just looked like a war zone
00:22:51the whole beach was covered in debris concrete parts of her lifeboat shed and just uh walking
00:23:00around just seeing the damage it had caused yeah it was just unbelievable
00:23:06during the storm surge because of the inundation and water which was forecast for some but came
00:23:11unexpectedly for others the devastation was widespread and it cost a billion pounds in damage
00:23:20i never thought i'd experience losing me else to the sea
00:23:26the look on jackie's face i wouldn't like to see that on anyone's face again
00:23:33even to this day my mental health and looking back reflecting back on it you know that does play on
00:23:38your mind because this sort of sea sea erosion is still going on down here people are still losing their
00:23:46houses
00:24:05in 2004 the quiet cornish village of boscastle was overwhelmed by a flash flood of devastating force
00:24:14in august that year the village experienced relentless rain in 12 out of the first 14 days of the month
00:24:23on the morning of the 16th local press photographer emily whitfield wicks was working close by
00:24:30boscastle is a really quaint little fishing village it's really really beautifully set down in the valley
00:24:39um at the bottom of a river that flows out through the harbor and out to sea it's a very
00:24:45very popular
00:24:46tourist site melanie graham and my husband and i and our three children were on holiday in cornwall and
00:24:54staying in our caravan the weather on august the 16th was sunny and bright in the morning and we visited
00:25:02tintagil castle then we decided we'd pop into boscastle um kind of on our way home despite a bright
00:25:10start to the day by late morning things had started to change there was a few black clouds around but
00:25:16nothing significant when we arrived we drove over the little bridge around and into the car park we
00:25:23found the space um sort of like right alongside the river walked down the car park and we found
00:25:28herself in the visitor center so um we went in there we had a look around and then the rain
00:25:34started
00:25:34coming down just minutes after stepping into the visitor center a thunderstorm rolled in marking the
00:25:41start of a downpour that would dump almost 200 millimeters of rain in just 24 hours across parts
00:25:47of cornwall the rain just got harder and harder and more more water was now no longer going down the
00:25:54river but coming down the car park it was getting heavier and heavier and we realized the river had
00:26:01burst its banks we began to get a bit scared at that point flash floods can happen very very quickly
00:26:09sometimes in a matter of minutes sometimes it's not even raining where it floods
00:26:16the geography of boss castle is really important we've got the main river the balancee joined by
00:26:23two other smaller rivers this is a steep sided valley and it has impermeable rocks which means
00:26:29the water cannot soak in and rush it straight off down the valley downstream on the day of the flood
00:26:36two billion liters of water rushed through boss castle
00:26:42i got a phone call from the cornish guardian reporter who said there's a flood in the boss castle car
00:26:48park
00:26:49and can you go and check it out when i arrived you could see that everything was becoming more and
00:26:54more crazy the weather wise and it just there was just something not right it was still raining very
00:27:01very heavily so i parked at the top of boss castle and and walked down the road that snakes down
00:27:06into the
00:27:06village we were sheltering in the visitor center and we we could see that the river now was no longer
00:27:14contained within the river river banks or whatever it had come over the the side of the bank and was
00:27:19now heading down the car park the water started to come into the visitor center and we saw cars
00:27:27actually moving in the car park being pushed by the water into other cars
00:27:33this was now a fast-moving situation the environment agency had already issued a flood alert for the village
00:27:40and emergency services were being dispatched including a search and rescue helicopter from
00:27:45nearby royal navy air station cold rose my name's bobby omens i was the winch operator back in 2004 during
00:27:54the boss castle floods on that day we got the call through saying that there was an incident at boss
00:28:00castle
00:28:01we were not expecting anything other than a little bit of flooding
00:28:06we flew up the coast expecting to see the village as we come around the headland but the first thing
00:28:12we noticed was the discoloration of the sea large amounts of sediment and debris carried by the flood
00:28:19waters had caused the sea to turn a chocolate brown color this was a dirty flash flood it was all
00:28:26of that
00:28:26water plus all of the debris that it had picked up it was cars it was flower pots it was
00:28:32mud all powerfully
00:28:34moving through boss castle destroying bridges destroying homes rushing into shops
00:28:41as we rounded the corner and you could see the devastation starting to unfold it then started
00:28:47to get a bit more serious and a bit more worrying and the radio calls asked us to literally search
00:28:53the
00:28:54harbour area and fly up the valley into the town looking to see if any of the cars or if
00:29:01there was
00:29:01anybody within the surface water that we could actually rescue at that time of year the village
00:29:07hosted approximately 1 000 visitors alongside 1 000 local residents all of whom found themselves at risk
00:29:14within just 15 minutes of bob's search and rescue team receiving the call
00:29:22so as i came around the corner at the bottom of the hill it suddenly looked like a tsunami i
00:29:29was i just
00:29:30stood there in shock the car floating over there look that blue card's floating the river had become
00:29:38a it was just this torrent torrent of water running through the village so my instincts kicked in i proceeded
00:29:48to take photographs
00:29:53so in the visitors center at the time there was 12 of us there was
00:29:57my family of five another family of five and then the lady who was working in the shop and her
00:30:05assistant
00:30:06once the water in the visitor center had got up to kind of you know a calf level
00:30:13and it was still rising we began to get a bit scared at that point
00:30:19we decided we needed to um evacuate the lady who was running the shop suggested we
00:30:26went up the loft ladder because it was dry up there so whilst we're in the loft of the visitor
00:30:31center we
00:30:31could hear the the noise of the river and we could see large trees going down the river then we
00:30:39heard a
00:30:39massive crash and that the whole building shook a tree that had actually come down the river smashed
00:30:45into the visitor center and it was at that point we realized that it was no longer safe to stay
00:30:52in the
00:30:52visitor center what i was seeing was just surreal there was a torrent of water going down through the
00:31:01street carrying cars with it out to sea the car park was just a notion of water there's buildings that
00:31:11were disappearing it was just chaos everywhere by now there were seven navy coastguard and air
00:31:18ambulance helicopters buzzing around the sky above boscastle making an already dangerous rescue
00:31:24operation even more difficult boscastle being in a a steep-sided valley made it very awkward for any
00:31:32more than one or maybe two aircraft to be lying abreast not only that you had electric wires going
00:31:40across the valley so we were obviously keeping our eyes out for those and dodging those
00:31:47the river valency had become a three meter high wall of water which was rushing through the village at
00:31:53a staggering 40 miles per hour boscastle had become an extremely hostile environment so while we're in
00:32:00the in the in the in the loft of the visitor center we could hear these helicopters going overhead
00:32:08over the radio the question was asked who do you want us to save the answer come back was just
00:32:13save who
00:32:14you can helicopters seem to be coming in and out flying through the valley and not coming to us
00:32:22so nobody seemed to know we were there in a desperate attempt to be rescued those stranded
00:32:27in the visitor center made a dangerous decision to go outside onto the roof it was a slight very slippery
00:32:35roof so one of the dads went up and straddled at the top and then alan passed the children one
00:32:42by one out
00:32:43of the window and up to the other dad it was raining it was cold we were shivering but uh
00:32:51while we were
00:32:51on the the roof great gradually more and more aircraft were coming over our heads as we were flying
00:32:57up the valley i always got my head out the window and i could see these people on on the
00:33:03roof they'd
00:33:03actually spotted rebecca on the roof wearing a pink bright pink fleece you immediately assume that if
00:33:13it's a pink colored coat it's obviously female or a child but they stood out because they were sat on
00:33:19the the roof of the building just hanging on for grim death in the wind and rain
00:33:25on the day of the flood we had 75 millimeters falling in two hours that's an awful lot of rain
00:33:32that's normally what we would see falling in august in this area
00:33:38now the rain was torrential and it hurt your body when it hit you our helmets got very wet
00:33:46because we've got our heads out the door looking for people and it quickly your intercom microphones
00:33:52on the helmets got saturated which become crackly so we then had to resort to using hand signals
00:34:00the helicopter did finally turn up and stopped over the top of us
00:34:08the winch man came down and he landed right next to me
00:34:15so there were there were six children he took all the children first
00:34:19then then he came back down and then started winching the ladies
00:34:23gradually they're all going up i'm feeling yes another one gone another one's safe
00:34:27so we'll looks like we're going to get out of this and i was the last person to be taken
00:34:32up into the aircraft
00:34:40i think the the first part of feeling safe is when we all five of us were in that helicopter
00:34:50the boss castle flood is very interesting because it was so violent
00:34:54uh and we don't often see flash floods in the uk they're very dramatic indeed when we see people
00:35:00being rescued by helicopter and that shows that it's a rare event five hours of torrential rain
00:35:06caused over two million tons of water to rush through boz castle and the surrounding areas of north cornwall
00:35:12my biggest memory if you like of the whole event was how nobody lost their lives and makes you immensely
00:35:21proud
00:35:24one thing that bob said to us afterwards was that it was a very unusual rescue so normally they're
00:35:30rescuing people someone's gone out the windsurf they've done something wrong and they've got into
00:35:34trouble and then they've had to be rescued he said you were just literally in the wrong place at the
00:35:39wrong time as shocking as that day was i think the impact on me is seeing how people do come
00:35:48together
00:35:49there is a true cornish spirit that comes out in situations like that
00:35:53i think as a family since then we've you know we're very close um we frequently talk about boss castle
00:36:05you know it makes you think how how great you know family life is and and to make that your
00:36:12priority
00:36:12really overall the floods caused an estimated 50 million pounds worth of damage more than 60
00:36:20buildings were seriously affected and four completely destroyed dozens of vehicles were washed into
00:36:26the sea and over 100 people were airlifted to safety in the biggest peacetime rescue mission ever seen on mainland
00:36:34britain
00:36:49in 1987 weather forecasters warned of a major storm that was set to hit by the 15th of october but
00:36:57as
00:36:57the date neared the threat seemed to fade in the five days leading up to the great storm we were
00:37:02tracking
00:37:03an extra tropical low pressure area that had come across warm waters heading to the uk and we knew it
00:37:09was going to collide with some cold air coming from the arctic but the trap was going to take it
00:37:13much
00:37:13further south from the uk just clipping the far south coast maybe but also affecting france but the forecast
00:37:21in the end went very wrong my name is david tyler and i was the electrical engineer officer on board
00:37:32the
00:37:32mv hengist cross channel ferry on the 15th of october i joined the ship as usual at 6 45 in
00:37:39the morning
00:37:40our plan that day was it was the same as every day to do six crossings of the channel three
00:37:44round trips
00:37:45to boulogne and lay back at night by the afternoon of the 15th of october the uk was calm but
00:37:53out over
00:37:54the bay of biscay trouble was brewing now we'd have this low pressure coming from warm waters meeting some
00:38:02very cold air coming from the arctic so the energy that this had combined with the cold air coming this
00:38:07big temperature gradient between the two i mean it gave it loads of power so we had an extra tropical
00:38:12storm
00:38:12heading to the uk i'm not a hurricane my name is bob ogley and i was the editor of the
00:38:24local
00:38:24newspaper in seven oaks the seven oaks chronicle on the night of october the 15th i decided to walk to
00:38:33the pub the landlord immediately said to me did you walk and i said yes he said well don't walk
00:38:41home
00:38:41it could be dangerous we're going to have a very wild and windy night he showed me his barometer
00:38:49and the pressure had fallen dramatically and then he came up with the words i will never forget
00:38:56he said ignore anything that michael fish said on the television good afternoon to you earlier on today
00:39:02apparently a woman rang the bbc and said she heard that there was a hurricane on the way well if
00:39:06you're
00:39:06watching don't worry there isn't i first noticed that the weather was deteriorating um late afternoon
00:39:15early evening the wind was blowing harder and harder and faster and faster it took quite a long
00:39:21time to get the vessel back into folkestone from return of the second crossing what is normally a 15
00:39:28minute exercise took almost four hours when we got back into folks and it was decided that we would
00:39:34cancel the third round trip that day and just lay over by midnight the storm had reached the western
00:39:40english channel and by 1 35 a.m on the 16th of october warnings were out for winds as strong
00:39:46as force 11
00:39:47gales we were woken up about two o'clock by what sounded like an express train coming into the bedroom
00:39:59we looked out of the window the whole of the night sky was illuminated
00:40:07my first reaction was god they've done it they've dropped the bomb
00:40:13and they were actually trees falling onto power cables and these giant flashes were lighting up the sky
00:40:24my immediate thought was the children are in a bedroom quite close to a window there's a big tree
00:40:31outside and i've got to move them so i took the children downstairs the moment we got into the front
00:40:39room uh i made a cup of tea but the thing i remember clearly was the cup in the saucer
00:40:46actually rattling
00:40:47because the wind was getting into the conservatory it was a storm of a an incredible ferocity attacking
00:40:57the house and fading and attacking again around the coast several locations had winds of 100 miles an
00:41:04hour and at shoreham at 10 past three in the morning our peak gust of wind 115 miles an hour
00:41:11that's the
00:41:12equivalent to a category three hurricane and in folkestone harbor the stormy winds were whipping
00:41:19up the sea into a dangerous frenzy it's high tide so the ship was getting buffeted and battered against
00:41:25the harbor wall and we're also parting mooring lines and wires and the mooring lines are as thick as your
00:41:30forearm they were literally just snapping so we couldn't really keep the ship against the jetty arm
00:41:35because the ship was getting damaged and that's when the captain made the decision to head out to sea
00:41:41just to ride the storm out we only knew we're out in the open sea because of the waves and
00:41:50we took an
00:41:51almighty wave over the ship's bow we listed over to the port side and we just rocked as we as
00:41:58we went
00:41:59it was like shuddered we shuddered to port and then back to starboard the atmosphere in the in the engine
00:42:06control room at this point was getting quite tense i looked at the others i think we were all
00:42:11thinking the same thing someone from the engine room needed to go outside on deck to make sure
00:42:18nothing had been damaged and it was david who bravely volunteered when i went up to check the
00:42:26emergency generator i went out into the boat deck and i heard wind like i've never ever heard in my
00:42:32life
00:42:32it was shrieking screaming it was so severe so strong those winds it instilled fear into me
00:42:43we took another wave over the bell
00:42:48the effect of that wave started a chain of events we lost the two remaining generators which caused us to
00:42:54lose the two main engines and that's how we ended up with no power that was scary that was scary
00:43:00just
00:43:01drifting so you couldn't see anything at all on land you had no no idea where you were before the
00:43:09captain's called us up to the bridge and he said i think it would be apt now to say a
00:43:14prayer when the
00:43:16captain said that hit home how dire our situation actually was and i prayed
00:43:26we could feel ourselves running around i was scared i was scared for my life
00:43:33then we saw the sun come up and we realized where we were
00:43:40it was such a relief to see land we perched on a on a concrete groin we were pretty sure
00:43:47that we
00:43:47were hard and fast there we weren't going anywhere just relief just relief that we knew we were going
00:43:52to get home that day and see our families quite soon after that uh kent fire and rescue showed up
00:43:57and they got us off the vessel which we were very very grateful for you could see this hole which
00:44:02was
00:44:02in excess of 32 feet long just torn open in the side of the ship which you could get the
00:44:08proverbial
00:44:08double-decker bus through people woke up to this wide spread devastation scenes that were just
00:44:15completely unimaginable the deadly weather event affected much of england with the storm's path
00:44:22starting in the south coast of the country before moving north and reaching the humber estuary the
00:44:28great storm was the most catastrophic to hit the uk in 300 years and douglas hurd who was the home
00:44:35secretary at the time described it as the worst night since the blitz
00:44:49first light i opened the front door and to my astonishment the woodlands had gone i remember
00:44:58there was a tree down and i climbed on the trunk and i was looking south and i realized my
00:45:04car had
00:45:05gone it was under an oak tree and it was completely flattened in just a few hours the storm had
00:45:13caused
00:45:14billions of pounds worth of damage and left hundreds of thousands without power roads railways and airports
00:45:21were all brought to a halt by falling trees there were no cars on the road at all there were
00:45:27no
00:45:27aeroplanes in the sky there was no one around so it was an eerie unusual morning i remember neighbors
00:45:38staring in disbelief of the world they'd seen the day before had completely changed
00:45:47in the lead-up to the great storm it had been pretty wet so the ground was quite soggy meaning
00:45:52that the roots had room to move then we were pummeled and pummeled and pummeled from one direction
00:45:57and the trees were in full leaf meaning they catch all of that wind and then as the main storm
00:46:01went
00:46:02through that band of rain the wind direction changed i mean all of the trees would have fallen very easily
00:46:07compared to just a normal spell of wet and windy weather as the sheer scale of the storm's aftermath
00:46:13started to become clear there was a strong appetite for news up and down the uk
00:46:22first thing i remember thinking is i've got to get the reporters out into the villages
00:46:27to see what's happened until it occurred to me that every single road in and out of the town of
00:46:34seven oaks was blocked and with phone lines down and a serious lack of transport getting word out was
00:46:41extremely challenging and we decided let's try and hire an airplane we managed to talk to the proprietor
00:46:48of a flying school at big and hill his first reaction was most of my planes are flipped over
00:46:55they're all damaged and then he said i've got one that might be okay i wasn't sure about the words
00:47:01might be but he said if you can get here we'll have a go
00:47:07the sight from the air was absolutely extraordinary even a bedgbury forest had collapsed tunbridge was
00:47:16flooded no park there were trees sort of been stripped of all the branches and all the leaves
00:47:23they looked like mounted guns pointing at the sky
00:47:33the storm prompted huge improvements in the science and communication of weather forecasting
00:47:39and the discovery of a new weather phenomena the sting jet
00:47:44a sting jet is where you have winds come from the mid troposphere they come all the way down to
00:47:50the
00:47:50surface and it's this narrow funnel of air with winds of in excess of 100 miles an hour that comes
00:47:55down and it's called a sting jet because it has a little hook at the bottom a curl just like
00:47:59the
00:48:00sting in the tail of a scorpion
00:48:05when i sense bad weather i do revisit the great storm um because i know i know what the weather
00:48:11can do
00:48:11i know what mother nature's capable of i don't think everybody does grasp that until you've seen it
00:48:17firsthand and i would say i saw it firsthand that night but was lucky enough to escape it
00:48:2618 people sadly lost their lives during the evening of the 15th and early morning of the 16th of october
00:48:331987
00:48:35the great storm ravaged the british countryside leaving scars that live on even today
00:48:40the storm was an event that changed a lot of lives we filled the newspaper up with stories and pictures
00:48:51and recollections of that night interviewing scores and scores of people uh to hear their their recollections
00:49:00the great storm of 1987 is synonymous with the uk and extreme weather i feel like the majority of
00:49:07people in the uk will remember it not least because the weather forecaster got it wrong but because it
00:49:41was so extreme
00:49:43the capital was gripped by something far greater than weather that would bring the city to its knees
00:49:49a toxic blanket of smoke and fog smog
00:49:55but the reason for this deadly event lay not just in the skies but in the city itself
00:50:03london sits in a natural geographical basin surrounded by hills
00:50:08and its air holds more moisture because of the river thames running through it
00:50:13so this encourages a phenomena known as a temperature inversion where warm air rises higher in the
00:50:18atmosphere and traps the cold air beneath it and often a temperature inversion is accompanied by fog
00:50:24early december 1952 was bitterly cold and an area of high pressure known as an anti-cyclone sat across the
00:50:32southeast of england this caused a blanket of warm moist air to stall over london pushing it
00:50:37towards the ground and there the cold winter temperatures condensed the water vapor in the air
00:50:43into fog and this trapped pollution over the city in an attempt to combat the freezing conditions many
00:50:51londoners burnt large amounts of coal releasing smoke and sulfur dioxide into the air within hours
00:50:58visibility dropped across the city as deadly smog descended and started to choke london
00:51:04my name is dr brian commons i was 22 in 1952 i lived in a place called ikenham near uxbridge
00:51:14i was an
00:51:15undergraduate i believe it was below zero in london for at least two days this is the worst fog in
00:51:24london's
00:51:24history even the traditional fog flares do little against the smoke-laden blanket 500 feet thick the pollution
00:51:32stabilize the wet fog and of course when it would last for several days as it did in 1952 that
00:51:39was an
00:51:39extreme problem i'm peter farrell and i in 1952 i was six years old and living in south london i
00:51:49don't
00:51:50think we ever thought about the environmental effect of burning all this coal it was just something we'd
00:51:59always done when you burn coal it releases sulfur dioxide into the air and this sulfur dioxide if
00:52:07it combines with mist or water droplets in the air creates sulfuric acid my name is jennifer bromfield
00:52:15in 1952 in 1952 i was eight years old and living in south london in mitchum there was just no
00:52:23escaping
00:52:24smoke coal fires did create smoke which again contributed to smog weather was colder in those days
00:52:34there was a lot more snow than we tend to have now
00:52:40by the evening of the fifth they'd realized it was growing very thick and by the morning of the sixth
00:52:46it really was a state of emergency
00:52:51by day two the layer of smog which had formed over london was up to 200 meters deep covered a
00:52:57thousand
00:52:57square miles and it was going nowhere the big smoke had become the big smog
00:53:04smog smog was vastly different to fog smog smelt breathing it in wasn't very pleasant you could
00:53:14feel it going through down your throat it did catch your breath um you couldn't breathe easily
00:53:22when it was so thick with smog it was smelt not pleasantly and tasted a sort of acidic taste i'd
00:53:31say
00:53:31i mean people were coughing in the street
00:53:37by sunday the 7th of december the deadly smog was so dense and polluted that it was affecting homes
00:53:44and public spaces the one disadvantage of a cold fire it needs air so where does it get that air
00:53:51it has
00:53:52to draw it in and came from outside so the house had poor quality air drawn into the home
00:53:59this smog is going everywhere a lot of the smogs before you could close your door and it wouldn't
00:54:05get inside now it's like this terrible ghostly presence whatever you do you cannot shut it out of your
00:54:11house i opened the door went into the hall and looked over at the letterbox and the smog was pouring
00:54:20through it like a stream of water and so it's coming out of a dam and it was sort of
00:54:26green and
00:54:27gray color quite foul so my mother came back oh my god and stuffed the cushion in the letterbox but
00:54:34by
00:54:35that time it had formed a sort of small pool on the on the floor hospitals had become overwhelmed with
00:54:45patients suffering from breathing difficulties with as many as 900 deaths per day attributed to the
00:54:51immediate effects of the smog at its peak every day the smog persisted 800 tons of sulfuric acid formed
00:54:57in the atmosphere the result of almost 400 tons of sulfur dioxide belts from the chimneys across london
00:55:05add to that 1 000 tons of smoke particles and you've got the recipe for one of the worst air
00:55:10pollution
00:55:10events in recorded history seeing people fighting for air and breathing in dirty air
00:55:21but i shall never ever forget that the evening news reported that livestock at smithfield market
00:55:28had died of asphyxiation and by day four the entire population of the nation's capital simply could not
00:55:35see what was around them the smog made it so impossible to see where you were going that people
00:55:42were lost in an instant and i wanted across the road and i became very disoriented and after a few
00:55:49minutes i wasn't sure what was happening and i ended up on the same side of the road as i
00:55:53started
00:55:54public transport did run but again only with great caution
00:56:01busses had great difficulty getting along people had flares to show the buses could see where to go
00:56:12in the beam of light from a vehicle you could see the swirling of the smog within that beam
00:56:20you couldn't see the fence which was three meters away from the window you could barely see the window
00:56:26ledge it was if somebody had gone just painted the window gray
00:56:33after five long days the weather in the southeast changed
00:56:39the blocking high pressure finally broke down allowing atlantic weather systems to freshen up the
00:56:44conditions and to disperse the choking air the great smog wasn't just inconvenient it was also
00:56:52incredibly poisonous and harmful to health in total it's estimated that as many as 12 000 people died
00:57:00as a direct result of its effects in december 1952 and in the months and years that followed more than
00:57:07100 000 people suffered long-lasting respiratory diseases attributed to the great smog even though the
00:57:13smog had gone it left its deadly effects behind it left its dirt behind houses buildings streets were covered
00:57:21in soot and smog but it also left its dirt in the lungs of people londoners breathed a collective
00:57:28sigh of relief but this was by no means the end of the story my mother suffered from a chest
00:57:34condition
00:57:34that made breathing difficult at the best of times if there was a smog then her her breathing was
00:57:42extremely difficult there were a few times when she did get admitted to hospital
00:57:50in the east end of london where it was poorer and more crowded but there were also more factories
00:57:55the death rate for this time in december was nine times higher than it ordinarily should be in the
00:58:01london smog of 1952 4 000 people died within a few days the death toll and the filth rose together
00:58:08many
00:58:09years later that i read up a little bit about the smog and the number of people who died as
00:58:16a direct
00:58:16result of that smog and that was appalling it was this gigantic poisonous smog in 1952 that transformed
00:58:26the attitudes of the british people and the politicians this was only five days of smog and it killed
00:58:3512 000 people you couldn't have a greater sign to the politicians that the day of coal is over
00:59:00in late july 2005 warm humid air settled over the midlands while cooler air pushed in from
00:59:08the southwest when the two met it sparked some heavy thundery showers across the midlands and east anglia
00:59:16in balsall heath two miles south of birmingham city center ejaz uddin was at home on that particular
00:59:23day i'd actually just come back from living abroad so i was unpacking generally recovering from jet lag
00:59:31four miles away at the yardley crematorium david lane was just finishing work for the day
00:59:38i was living in sparkbrook at the time it was quite early in the afternoon i mean 2 30 2
00:59:4545 and i saw
00:59:47the sky going dark you don't normally get the sky going dark at that time i was actually in my
00:59:54bedroom
00:59:54when i first got an inkling that something was going wrong it started to get dark then the temperature
01:00:00changed the sort of the atmosphere changed it became very humid very unusual very surreal it just felt
01:00:10electric and that's when i realized that something was wrong i was driving home from work and felt the
01:00:19rear of my car lifting on the suspension
01:00:24unbeknownst to the people of birmingham unsettled thunderstorms across the city were about to collide
01:00:30warm humid air with cold dry air ideal conditions for a tornado to form so the warm air rises through
01:00:38the cold air creating a violently whirling mass of air called a vortex as the turning vortex draws in more
01:00:45warm air from the moving thunderstorms its speed increases if it continues to stretch and intensify
01:00:52the vortex may touch the ground and at this point it becomes a tornado
01:01:00i was just driving along and suddenly the sky's darkened cars buffeting about what on earth's happening
01:01:09the air seemed to be straight enough full of grass clippings and then i looked up a blue double bed
01:01:17mattress flying through the air at about 30 feet up i just sort of stared outside i noticed two trees
01:01:26in the distance and they just literally flopped to one side both of them in the same direction
01:01:33i realized that this was passing in front of me
01:01:40what on earth's happening what sort of damage is this thing wreaking
01:01:46you could see obviously the school turret come off the tiles coming off the church sheets of corrugated
01:01:52steel and i'm flying through the air they're obviously going to do some damage
01:01:58the tornado was ferocious fast moving and short-lived in just under five minutes it traveled seven miles
01:02:06that's carving a path through king's heath mosley balsall heath and smallheath before coming to a stop in
01:02:13erdington study by the university of manchester tracking tornado hot spots in the uk found three
01:02:19distinct regions with a higher chance of a tornado strike and one of these was actually in a line west
01:02:25and south of birmingham and in this zone there's a five percent chance of seeing a tornado here every year
01:02:32The tornado spiralled in and out so quickly,
01:02:35no-one really had a chance to grasp what was happening.
01:02:38I was part of a specialist international search and rescue team.
01:02:42We carried pagers with us 24 hours a day.
01:02:47And I distinctly remember the pager going off.
01:02:51It said, Tornado, Birmingham, city centre.
01:02:54My immediate thought was, this can't be right.
01:02:57We don't get tornadoes in Birmingham.
01:03:02I found out it was a tornado later on,
01:03:05I think probably about an hour after the event,
01:03:07once the police had arrived.
01:03:09Suddenly thought, well, I'm on a camcorder.
01:03:11Why don't I go out and record it?
01:03:14All I could see was hundreds of people out on the streets
01:03:17and just walls collapsed, cars overturned, trees uprooted.
01:03:23It was a scene of complete chaos.
01:03:25It was like a bomb had hit the place.
01:03:27I've travelled extensively.
01:03:28I've seen thunderstorms in Miami,
01:03:30dust storms in Dubai,
01:03:32monsoons in Pakistan, et cetera,
01:03:33but nothing on this level.
01:03:35A major emergency had been declared.
01:03:37So we knew that something really serious
01:03:39had actually happened.
01:03:42We had to plan our search and rescue.
01:03:45We were told that it was at least a kilometre wide
01:03:48by 1.6 kilometres.
01:03:50And within that area, there was 30 different streets.
01:03:5540% of the buildings actually had damage to them.
01:03:59And 15 buildings had completely lost their roofs.
01:04:03So there was a huge amount of devastation
01:04:06in a very localised area.
01:04:07When the storm had passed,
01:04:09the thing that remains in my memory more than anything
01:04:11was I was walking down Mull Street
01:04:14and one of the houses there
01:04:16had had the front of the house ripped off.
01:04:18And it looked just like a child's doll's house.
01:04:22You could see into each room.
01:04:24I've never seen anything like it before.
01:04:27Roofs had been ripped off houses.
01:04:30A lot of structural damage,
01:04:32a lot of trees that had been felled
01:04:34in over 30 years with West Midlands Fire Service.
01:04:38The level of damage and destruction,
01:04:41I'd never really seen that before in a UK event.
01:04:45If I had turned up not knowing it was a tornado,
01:04:48I would have expected it to have been a gas explosion.
01:04:53I can remember trees that had gone through front windows.
01:04:59I can remember cars being overturned,
01:05:03lots of trees on top of cars, walls collapsed.
01:05:09The Birmingham tornado was actually declared
01:05:13as a major emergency.
01:05:15And on that day, we had over 25 fire engines,
01:05:19over 100 firefighters.
01:05:21We didn't know if there's still people
01:05:23actually missing or trapped inside those damaged buildings.
01:05:27So that was our main task,
01:05:29was to search and obviously to extricate then
01:05:32anybody that may have been trapped inside the buildings.
01:05:35Despite the extreme intensity of the tornado,
01:05:39at times hitting wind speeds of 130 miles per hour,
01:05:43thankfully no lives were lost.
01:05:4519 people were injured, however,
01:05:48and the Birmingham tornado remains the costliest
01:05:51ever recorded in Britain,
01:05:53racking up a repair bill of over £40 million.
01:05:57The time of the tornado was mid-afternoon,
01:06:00and it would have been so much different
01:06:01if that tornado had happened during the evening hours
01:06:04when people are at home,
01:06:06or indeed later when people are in bed.
01:06:08I would have expected a lot more injuries
01:06:10and potentially worse.
01:06:13When I went out walking with my wife in the evening,
01:06:16we had a stroll around the area to see what had happened
01:06:19and tried to work out the path that the storm had taken.
01:06:24It went through my mind that this must have been
01:06:26what it was like in the Blitz,
01:06:27because Sparkbrook was quite heavily bombed.
01:06:30I just find it hard to believe
01:06:32that no one died in this case.
01:06:35I would describe it as something very extreme.
01:06:39It's the sort of thing that you imagine
01:06:40when you see on the news happening in, you know,
01:06:42America somewhere,
01:06:43or some remote part of the world.
01:06:46You would never expect something like this in this country.
01:06:48You would never expect something like this in this country.
01:07:19America somewhere.
01:07:20America somewhere.
01:07:22America somewhere.
01:07:23America somewhere.
01:07:23America somewhere.
01:07:23You
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